The Massacre of Mankind, by Stephen Baxter.

This is the official sequel to H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, in which the Martians are ack for Round 2 (a bit as in Marvel's Killraven series).

I enjoyed it quite a bit, although I believe it could easily have been a hundred pages shorter. It is divided in four parts, between which many years can elapse.

In part one, we reacquaint ourselves with characters from the original novel. They are now all named (and we learn that the narrator from WotW is not Wells himself, who is actually a competitor, but one Walter Jenkins). Miss Elphinstone, also from the original book, eventually married Jenkins's brother with whom she had shared a few chapters. She subsequently divorced him and is our main point-of-view character here, a daring war veteran, suffragette and journalist.

Fifteen years have passed, and as one would expect the Martian invasion changed the course of history; World War I did not involve England nor the US, and although France was beaten, the fighting continues in imperial Russia. Some martian technology has been retro-engineered, leading to things like the Titanic surviving its maiden voyage and its unlucky encounter with an iceberg. England has become something of an authoritarian state.

Jenkins himself is also divorced and lives as a quasi recluse with autistic tendencies, and although he has a huge impact on the plot, we don't see much of him this time around.

Once the cast of characters is established in large part, we witness the return of the Martians to England and the discomfiture of the authorities who, as is so often the case, have made preparations to win the previous war but didn't anticipate that the enemy might change its tactics. First, the Martians have apparently found a way (unexplained) to become immune to the bugs that killed them during the first invasion. Second, having anticipated that the British army and its astronomers would predict where they would land and doubtless send a huge welcoming committee, the Martians begin by sending not their manned cylinders but a large number of kinetic impactors that dispose of the enemy and clear the land for a proper arrival.

The rest of Part 1 is devoted to the rout of the British army and the conquest of the country, much as in WotW. (I could have done without all the scenes of people fleeing... been there, read that).

Part 2 begins two years later. The Martians are essentially unbeatable, but their goal is not extermination. They control a large zone in England where they start culling the population selectively; they seem to want to treat us as cattle. A plan is made to try and poison their blood supply (they feed on human blood) with a new pathogen, and it is Miss Elphinstone who is charged with delivering it by carrying it in her own bloodstream. Officially, however, her mission is to try to communicate with the Martians using symbols conceived by Jenkins. Much as in Arrival, symbols play a big role in the plot.

The novel also makes use of the fact that other planets in our solar system are peopled, and the story's premise is that the outermost planets saw intelligence develop first. Jupiter is therefore supposed to be far more advanced than Mars, which is far more advanced that Earth, which itself is more advanced than Venus. Martians, in need of greener pastures (so to speak) have already invaded Venus, but not the mightier Jupiter.

Part 2 is rich in adventure, but once again we could have cut several parts dealing with the culture of potatoes in an occupied territory and the like. Such descriptions may make the book more down-to-earth, but slow the pace down. And anyway, Miss Elphinstone soon realizes that the "new pathogen" plan is flawed, as it would just be one more episode in an ongoing war that we'd surely lose in the end. Besides, she thinks she has a better, cleverer way to end the war for good!

Part 3 describes the arrival of a new wave of Martian invaders, striking all over the world. Here again many pages could have been cut, because we get to see how several places are conquered even if nothing else is learned.

Luckily, Miss Elphinstone's plan works. I won't spoil it, but it is at the same time original, quite unbelievable and an acknowledged Deus ex Machina. I wouldn't say I found it frustrating, though; the seeds had been planted early in the novel. The Martians stop their invasion and seemingly vanish.

Part 4 is the shortest, and that is unfortunate as it is the most original section of the novel. We once again jump many years into the future, and see how Earth changed after the second invasion. We also learn that most Martians are still here, and that although they have renounced the armed struggle, they could still be a big problem for other reasons. Some (like Churchill) want to exterminate them, but others (like Jenkins) want to negotiate a mutually acceptable modus vivendi. The conclusion is pleasantly unconventional.

Many historical characters make appearances, and the mix of nostlagia/alternate history/military thriller makes for a nice read. I liked it.

Dwellers in the Mirage
A.Merritt

This is the third of 3 A Merritt books I had, and I liked the other for what they were.. random 'travelogue' adventure novels of the 30s. This one was longer, and had more of a story before our hero, Leif, gets whisked away to the Shadow-lands and battles the evil (in this case, a witch-woman who wanted to turn him to the dark side and seemed to have successfully done so with other incarnations of him in the past).

There was also a bit of Lovecraftian horror here.. which didn't make for a great mix. On the whole, this book was just a slog. It was much longer than the others, but that length was spend with the horror bit, and just taking a long time to get to the fantasy world when the magic happens. The main character here has a sidekick so he can angst away to him, and it just doesn't work as well as the straight up fantasy adventure with a small excuse that the others were.

As a side note, there's a newish "genre" called romantasy that mashes up traditional romance novel type stories but sets them in fantasy settings with all the world building and magic system development you see in modern fantasy (the likes of Brandon Sanderson as an example of modern fantasy). I've not read much at all of these types of fantasy, but they are getting popular with a certain section of modern fantasy readership and get of exposure in the fantasy corner of booktube (i.e. the corner of youtube whose content focuses on book discussion). These are a more recent trend than paranormal romance, which has been around and going strong for a few decades at least now. But many point to things like Anne McCaffery's Pern books as kind of the blueprint on which the romantasy genre was built.

-M